Peacock Lepers
C. J. Leon

Copyright C. J. Leon, 2008, Vancouver
muselave@gmail
myspace/cjleonspoken
youtube/thesurrationalone
*********************************

How Do I Love Thee? ............................1
Hallowe'en .............................................4
The Compliment ....................................6
The War of Kingdoms ...........................8
Stop Breath-ing, Start Death-ing ..........11
Diogenes, The Cynic .............................15
The Scouts Upon Israel .........................21
Alexandra ..............................................25
A Boy and a Woman .............................27
The Well ................................................29
The Cup..................................................29
I met a girl by the road .........................30
Under orange streetlights... ..................30
In daylight I cast no shadow .................31
Life, the Beauty, I myself... ...................31
Papa's Last Shot .....................................32
When Ted Came Late for Dinner ........34
Graduation 2006 ....................................37
Icarus ......................................................42
A New Year's Lease ...............................44
I Met a Girl ............................................46
Agnus .....................................................48
LA, or a Prophecy
Concerning the West Coast ..................50
Poor Blake ..............................................51
Who sitting silent... ...............................52
This week of sobriety... .........................52
Hastings .................................................53
OM .........................................................54
*******************************

How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? What shall I say?
Shall I compare thee to my every other lover
and thereby reduce thee to similes and inequalities
and kill so many trees?

Shall I tell thee that thy voice
is like one joyful bicycle horn honk-
honk-honking in monotone on a sunny day?

Shall I tell thee thine eyes
are like pinwheels spun by the wind
all jiggy and glitterful, especially on LSD?

Shall I inform thee that thy flowing locks
are like a field of summer grass
overgrown, turned yellow,
teeming with crickets'
songs of wooing?

That thy smile is a banana,
not over-ripe, but just right?

That thy clothes cling
like molting snakeskin?

That thine incessant knuckle-cracking
is like the long shake of lucky dice?

That thine ears
stick out from thine head
like the wings of grey herons in flight?

That thy sense of humour
is like Superman,
faster than a speeding bullet,
more powerful than a locomotive,
and capable of flying off into outer space
where no one else can follow thee without cumbersome
mechanical contrivances and explanations
only NASA can provide.

That thy toes are like rose roots,
usually crusted with dirt
and sprouting
shins full of prickles
but that eventually reach
other parts of thee more readily
analogized with roses, such as nipples?

Or that thine heart
is like a muddy country stream
filled with black tadpoles and children’s toes
so seething with wonder, with life,
and metamorphoses?
These, yea these, and so many more reasons,
reasons countless as thy body's tiny cells
that are like seconds in thine egg-timer
figure with skin as shiny as glass,
are the reasons I do now
email this to thee.
*******************************

Hallowe'en

My friend speaks to me for the first time in months,
he says something about his friends
not only far but distant
and his father dead
and his ten year-old sister
and life insurance.

I have been watching a senile old dog
have a three hour anxiety attack
because of the fireworks.
She's in the closet
making noises
now.

I am tired and sleepless, though STD free,
as I know from my check-up this morning.

I made a fool of myself,
some made a fool of me,
and I told a ghost story.

I walked in the
weeping fall today,
as much as I could bear
the palette of a bloody rag
and all the faces painted death.
Winter's naked skeletons
are flaking summer's pulp.

The vegetable heads are
jaundiced and inflamed.

I hear the feathered evergreens
mock plucked deciduous trees.

And whistle-crack,
whistle-pop,
whistle,
sizzle,
snap!

O Autumn, enough!

Enough, enough,
you leprous
peacock!
*******************************

The Compliment

We were strangers
at the street corner
watching red lights.

I was singing my song,
wearing black,
my black
guitar case in hand.

Then she tilted her head to hear
and check me out
on the sly.

She was thick-limbed and Italian-styled,
wearing a short black one-piece,
black stilettos,
too much make-up,
hairspray, and perfume,
and, after all that, ironically,
tiny goldbud earrings.

When the light turned, she began
to walk with her head still inclined
just a little towards me...

but a late car was passing the intersection!

I shouted, Woah-woah! Stop-STOP!
And fortunately she did.

The white car lurched to a halt.
She turned to me, flustered and red,
with her palms in the air
as if she'd been caught for a crime,
as the moment of panic on driver's
and passenger's on her and my faces
eased slowly away
and she crooned to me
an embarrassed
thank-you.

Yeah, no problem. I said.
And we went our separate ways.
No casual sex resulted from this encounter.

And then later I realized I may have unintentionally
sabotaged what would have been
the biggest compliment
anyone
wittingly or unwittingly
would ever have paid me in all my life.

And I learned that sometimes
we should content ourselves with less.
*******************************

The War of Kingdoms

I

If the insects ever allied
themselves to our destruction,
our species wouldn't stand a chance.

There are about a quadrillion ants on the planet.
That's about one hundred thousand per person.
Ants are vicious little mothers, as you know.
100 000. Imagine. And that's just the ants!

Dress yourself up
for the February of a Klondike winter,
now don't forget your gloves and scarf and toque,
and you'll need some heavy duty foot-covers,
then turn the thickness of that hot gear into
twitchy legs, antennae, and mandibles;
and that's what the ant realm's attack
on you is going to be like.

To add in the other kinds of insects:

Start by dressing yourself in your winter
gear again,
put yourself in the middle of the rear seat
of a spacious SUV,
then flood bugs through the vents
and turn the vehicle with all its interior space
into red compound eyes, short venomous stingers,
and pinching parasitic proboscises intent
on your obliteration.

Now, that's a Tracker-sized ball of bugs
with a tasty little disappearing you in the middle.

Fortunately, you won't have time
to suffer from all the diseases
they will incidentally infect you with. Oh no,
you'll be picked clean before you
can go into toxic shock.

You can see them on the horizon,
the dark cloud that blots out the sun
as the earth becomes black, iridescent, teeming.
The deafening roar of drones nears!

A tidal wave of bodies and wings
of tiny living things approaches
and the air suffocates your
crackling screams as
the bugs get in
old openings
and new
ones
too.


II

Yep. Gives me shivers.
Yep. Gives me the creeps.

What the-?
Uh-oh.

God help us!
Dear friends,

a fruit fly has just kamikaze-d
into my eyeball.
See?

It's this black speck, here,
a martyr on the tip
of my finger.

I fear, comrades,
that the war has begun.
*******************************

Stop Breath-ing,
Start Death-ing

I

Poetry is for seducing virgins,
as any 15 year-old boy can tell you.
But after a lifetime of no returns you might try
housewives, landlords,
or even retired crossing guards.
Do not despair. Keep at it. Keeping at it:
That's what poetry is for.

Let's say the maiden of your dreams
does not like your poem.
Or maybe she likes it,
but when you inform her
of the spelling mistake on line 17,
the one that should read "two",
she says she didn't notice
and, besides, she
never notices
things like that
and her name is Steph
and yours is X.X.X., but,
of course, she knows that
because that's written on the page.
And for whatever reason
things have become
abruptly
un-
satisfactory.

Get yourself published.
It's the cure for any hangover.
Love-sickness is no different sort of mess.
Yes, send your fine piece of lady-play to the press.

II

On the editor's desk
your work will meet the eyes
of a man (still an industry overpopulated
by such) or a woman who has done
no less the same.

What will be determined
is whether they did it better than you.

For purposes of verification in this matter,
you may receive the following postcard in the mail:

-----------------------
| Did you get any? |
| [ ] yes |
| [ ] no |
-----------------------

All editors not personally seduced by your original document
will, to your benefit, rely upon and trust your word as a poet,
which means,
in your case,
you must lie,
and provide
the postage.

If, after several years,
still you have received no response,
you must then query as to the status of your piece:
write this down;
and then do it;
this is critical.

III

If a lifetime of rejection in love and at the printers
is all your efforts offer, consider suicide.
It's practically surefire.

Do death by water,
it's the most poetic.

Strap your whole lifework
to your chest with
barbed wire

(make sure 1.to have written
everything with ballpoint pen
and 2.not to use your laptop)

and jump off the local* bridge
dreaming of posthumous $$$.

please note:
local is essential
in that you must
now stop trying
and start dying

*******************************

(Oscar,
the Grouch,
or)

Diogenes, The Cynic

Flat out on Athenian flagstones,
right at home in the agora, his living room,
lies, with a beard longer than his rusty loincloth, Diogenes,
the eater of onions, the Cynic,
named for the dogs,
who eat better,
but also pee
outside.

It is a hot day,
but Diogenes likes
what the Dog Days' sun
does for the meat of his mind
and the brown of his skin.

'Keeps it raw and real,
and just a little off,
though I look
cooked.

Which makes for
dedicated company.'

Then comes Alexander,
the Great, ever-young king,
in blue peacock plumes flanked by a regal retinue
who wear bronze plates on the curves of their
summer-bronzed bodies. They perspire.

Under the dead weight
of their peacetime armour,
sweat droplets stream down
their strong muscular abdomens,
down sculpted golden calves
into the damp leather
of sandals.

(The great king has come
to see the athletes' games,
and needs a certain guard.)

He sees a man prostrate
beside a large clay pot,
and thinks, 'By Zeus,
that dog Diogenes!'

Then he says,
"I've heard tell from our Aristotle's own
lips that this man is a living wizard.
Kind of funny how he smells."

"Diogenes!" He calls loudly,
though standing right above the man.
"I have heard you called a rogue and a charlatan,
but on the best of all authorities I have it
that you are a light unto this world
of which I am ruler, to some
even a god. I, Alexander,
shall give you any gift
in all my kingdom
that you desire."

Diogenes opens his eyes, squinting.
High-sun is exploding behind Alexander's blond
Macedonian curls, giving him a lion's mane of white sunrays.

'I've heard of this guy, Big Boy Al,
big spender, enjoys a bender,
more drinker than thinker
but a tinkerer
with philosophers.

‘Looks like he should:
eats fine food, has a harem
of a teenage brood, maybe a few,
pretty cool dude, or at least as popular.'

The Dog barks:
"Uh, yeah,
Alex, baby,
you know, I may be
a 'light unto your world',
but you're no star in mine.

“Would you move
a little to the left for me?
Even to the right would be fine."

Diogenes points to the
great king's head.

"Better shield
than a sheer veil, right?
See, sonny, you ain't so bright.
And you're in my sun.
So, move."

Alexander angles his neck
and leans back his clean chin,
looks up into the potent sun, closes his eyes;
he feels sweat run over his ribs
and the weight of fabric
on his body;

and he bursts
into laughter;

then the defeated king retreats
two steps from the man
and his house-pot.

His men’s armours glint.
"A coin!" He shouts.
A coin is given.

He spins it into the air,
lets it ring off the stones
and slaps it down underfoot
just above the crown
of Diogenes' head.

Diogenes yawns
without covering his mouth
and does not reopen his sleepy eyes.

"There are only two vocations
which I feel would be fitting
for myself and my ability."
says the young king
as he steps off the coin
and a familiarity appears to him
through his sunburnt shadowy vision.

His generals recognize the proud profile
of the world's ruler emblazoned
on a disc of stainless gold.
"I suppose that for now,
then, I shall remain
Alexander."

He leaves the coin behind him.
He lets the lying dogman sleep,
who wears a smile on his face
as he mutters into the sunlight,

"He gave me worse than a rock for a pillow,
but pleasant a being as he could ever be,
I suppose,
for a drunkard king."
*******************************

The Scouts Upon Israel

On the mountain boundary of Canaanite lands
a hard-eyed magician surveys a twilit view,
a lush foreign land shrouded in mist,
vision of Zion to the first Zionist.
He spoke Hebrew,
but the man was Egyptian.

"They have become desert dogs,
and are hungry for milk,
flesh, and honey.

“Long years have made them lean,
sun-crazed, restless for their due.

“The first generation has mostly passed on now,
but the next has been raised expecting returns.

“And I have promised that to them.
“And there will be bloodshed.

“Tell them, Aaron, that the voice
of the Faceless One through me
has promised them the bounty
of this black earth of wines."

He passed his palm in a half circle,
level with his chest, as if to bless the horizon.
He stretched electric fingers
into the bush-fire sky.
Aaron watched,
and listened to his silence.

"I have no more eyes, no more heart,
no more soul for slaughter.
These hands have no more healing left in them,
not for the wounds of innocents;
but this world is ours."

The desert shrieked and dark airs
swept in on the black Southern clouds.
Beyond their edges white stars
fell gleaming, shivering
like angels' tears.

"Tell them, Aaron,
that I too have sinned and broken
the All-Seeing Unseen's commandments,
and that I must not set my foot to burden
this land with the guilt of my crimes.
Tell them, Aaron, that I take no grave,
no period of mourning.
And, Aaron, my brother,
listen still to the words I have told you
and to the words I will continue to say."

His sage’s staff slipped
from his crack-skin withering grip,
hit rocks, coiled, uncoiled,
slithered down into a gap.
He stepped from his sandals;
they disintegrated to locusts
that clicked off and away
into the wailing desert.



Barefoot,
he walked
past the tent-rows
and the air was dry hot
and the earth was dry cold
and the blackness
of the storm
overcame
him.



Blood welled
in his empty footprints.Like a parasitic whirlwind, the hungry granules,


the grey sands bit him, stripped him,


ripped his skin, his meat, his bone,


up into the moonless


black storm-


sky,

where his eyes,
his tongue, and his heart
returned themselves to dust
and the Eternal God.
*******************************

Alexandra

Returning to my studies
from voyages abroad,
I enquired of a colleague
how things had changed.

“As for faculty and classes,”
he replied, “the same as ever.
But do you remember Alexandra?
She sat at the front of class
with long blond hair and glasses?”

-I remember she had many perfect grades.

“Yes, she’s the one...
She died.”

I flinched.

“We all knew she was sick;
we always knew she was sick;
but something caused her
to take to bed–
not a month...
She died.”

-I remember her, I said.Then thought, ‘I remember
her spine as straight as a divinity’s.
She was beautiful, unattainable, angelic.
I remember staring from the back of class;
how long and long I stared at her,
admiring her white light.’
*******************************

A Boy and a Woman

A boy and a woman
make love for the 100th time.

She touches his skin,
the invisible sensitive hairs,
presses against the firm muscular
toughness of green summer plums.

He squeezes her flesh,
grips her bone, her body
a tree full of December apples
warmed in winter's Halcyon days.

Their love is an equinox,
closing a distance in spacetime,
energies swirling in a subtler world.

Their lust is the fruit of autumn,
sour nectars, nodding limbs, horny stems,
the sucks and stings of humming yellow-jackets.

They are bodies of water in the rhythmic tide;
the new posing naked on a canvas of ages;
they are the rolling of the ocean's surf;
as one triumphal arch, they gleam
in golden rays of solstice sun.

Then avalanche,
flexation, collapse;

then the mountain stones
balance, silent, suddenly still,
and they sweat the dews gathered
from the mountain's trembling mists;

the trickling drops
of a hidden stream;

a crevice
between stones
is pricked by the thorn
of a budding wild pink rose,
the young one and up and comer;

then the shrivel and fall
of fruit in foul weather;

as his sad rain streams down
into her flowing springs of joy.
*******************************

The Well

Come draw water from the well, my Love;
Come drink, assuage thy thirst.

From silken petals of meadow flowers
Do silver drops of moon-born dews,
That glimmer in the predawn mists,
Fall-off to feed the living stream,
Source of the well of which I bid thee drink.

Come draw those water-dews, my Love;
Come drink, assuage thy thirst.
*******************************

The Cup

When my cup runneth over,
Catch every drop.
It is for you, it is yours,
The champagne of jouissance
From the flute of excess,
Your dessert of délice
This salt viscid wine.
It is you, who are the ritual,
And the cause of celebration
And the ecstatic overflowing.
When my cup runneth over,
Waste not a drop.
*******************************

I met a girl by the road
with Celtic curls in her hair,
and she gave me the bright rainbow
arched in the smoke sky with a finger
pointing up, and it made me smile
to see the crows already dancing.
*******************************

Under orange streetlights
in jumpy zig-zags
or "the twist"

raindrops
masquerade
as snowflakes,

that is,
until they
hit you in the face.
*******************************

In daylight I cast no shadow, raindrops
fall to the ground beneath my feet,
my words do not signify :
I am insubstantial as they.
*******************************

Life, the Beauty, I myself,
These escape uncrystallized;
Profoundly I am discontented.
To die each moment
No braver than before,
To live each moment
A prisoner of illusions:
This cannot satisfy;
Profoundly I am dissatisfied.
*******************************

Papa's Last Shot

Papa always watched the morning news
before taking his last shot of whiskey.

He didn't like to drink alone,
in the morning, without good reason.

Not that he didn't keep an overstock pile
of standby excuses ranging from
unemployment to alcoholism;
but he liked to keep
his misery
current.

If there was one thing
that bothered pops,
it was being alive.

The second would have been
the burden of responsibility
and another's affections.

So it was that he gave me my last meal,
at McDonald's, for lunch; six chicken nuggets
later and a painful talk that I couldn't be expected
to understand and he was a free man
without ex-wife, ex-child
but completely
free.
*******************************

When Ted Came Late for Dinner

You goddamn stupid bitch! I leave you alone for eight hours. What a bloody mess!
I told you to have dinner hot and waiting for me when I got home.
You ignorant floppy cunt, what does this look like to you?

First off, you stuffed it with all this chemical bullshit.
Where the fuck did you get this shit anyway,
the drug cabinet?
How many times do I have to tell you: only fresh bread, butter, and vegetables.

What are you trying to do? Do you
want me to get cancer or something?
Or you maybe? Or the pretty little kid?

Next off, you cut the meat before it was even roasted.
There's blood all over the bloody oven!
Pale as a quartz stone! I can see veins!
Didn't you notice? How tasty do you think that meat is going to be when it's done?
Did you even use garlic this time? God, I'm gonna put a stake thru your heart
when you're dead, because if anyone is having their life sucked out by vampires
it's you, you, you leech, sink, energy drain.

You never are
of a particularly sanguine disposition, but
your white as a zombie there. Up till 4 again?
4 in the fucking morning? Black eyes,
white face, you're pretty,
plain.

It's your
only time to write,
when I'm out 'n the kid's asleep.
I've heard it before, I don't wanna hear it again.

And the whole bloody house smells like gas!
I could smell it from outside on the walk by the roses.
A bit of flame and our house would blow
and burn like matchsticks.
You've got the bloody oven cranked on full and you forgot the bloody pilot!
The neighbours are gonna start talking you know: 'She's at it again!
She's a weird one, odd too, she's a strange gal, American,
Americans, they're like that, you know, peculiar,
fresh off the boat, in need of cultivation
in our fine English ways, good tea,
and such dark poetry
she writes!'

Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia Plath
slits her wrists in the bloody bath
every other week!
How's that for irony!
Shit, I gotta take a leak.

And you gotta put something in the bloody oven before you can take it out, eh?
With the goddamn pilot light on this time,
ya daft bitch!
You're not gonna find anything
by crawling half yourself in there like you done. Unless you're pigheaded. Ha!
Which we both know you are. Ha!
Yeah, get cookin'! Get cookin', woman!

Fine, don't listen! See if I care! Live
your life as a corpse. I don't give damn.
I got a date. I'm gonna dine out.
If I come home, I'll be late.
Cheers, hot stuff!
Ha!

Slam!

hsss...hsss...hsss...
*******************************

Graduation 2006

Line after line hour after hour,
this is graduation day.

The bells toll, deepening my shivers
from the tower above the wall
of all those lost student-soldiers’ names.

I remember those bells once jangling
an intolerable ‘Benny and the Jets’ cover
one warm Sunday morning.
But this is Tuesday,
and they’ve got nothing but the blues.

For a long while I don’t know where I am
or what I should be doing.

Finally, an old-hat foxy green-eyed red-head
tells me, in a clear authoritative voice
and with a peppering of practised wit,
exactly what she wants me to do.
After all these years, the dream comes true.

Collect a hood and gown
from a square wooden room that smells
like you’d expect a gown collection room to smell,
and from strangely optimistic people your age who wish you well.

Commence sweating in the high hot sun
under an ominous black on black
as you train through the field
alphabetically with strangers
to Convocation Hall.

Note the seventeen year-old
black-hair-halfway-down-her-back
hottie in corset standing with folded arms
visibly sour with annoyance at the edge of the field.

Listen to some motivational speech
about never not trying
by some guy
who dropped out of school
only to make a roaring success of his life.

Wear without spite the hanging choker
that Potentate Dick Screwface
noosed on you, willfully absent-mindedly,
totally unconcerned with you the human
or the potential aesthetics of your
once in a lifetime photo-op,
mom and dad waving from on high.

Be proud of your faux-rabbit pelt fringe
and its resemblance to real polar bear,
white Astroturf, and soft-bristle car mops,
its prickly Brillo texture, naturally, synthetic.

The entire life you have known is gone,
abruptly, poorly transmuted
to an insipid colour-copy manila bristle board,
not without a gleam, or a bit of
almost discernable Latin
on the topic of the higher aims of learning,
no doubt, but a trite ‘Way to go Champ!’
in a cheap Arial print-shop far-too-literal font
listing motto after emblem after silliness
all the way to those signatures of approval.
Those two sigils of freshness and quality.

I happen to shake one of those signatures’ hands.
President Somebody. Remarkable.
I think now and after only of the
instant liquid just-a-drop hand-sanitizer
my neurotic ex-girlfriend brought
with her everywhere,
and where I might procure the nearest bottle.

Last year they didn’t shake hands
for fear of SARS infection,
not, as one may have thought,
for fear of cliché euro-formalisms
or releasing with such grave gestures
these alcohol-tolerant, juvenile as ever
graduates onto the general populace.

I might, rather than that seedy, crawling ick-feeling,
dwell on that light-hearted sensation of accomplishment,
the one that elated me that whole hour
before I collapsed
after the two hours I brought myself to care
to write my philosophy of mysticism exam.

As though it were something to be proud of
people do not stop saying, “Congratulations!”

I see what they mean.
I mean, it’s right there in the middle:
Honours Bachelor of Science.
My specialization is not indicated: Mathematics,
for the record, design your own concentration
(that marvelous loop-hole exploited
only three days before graduating
in a very last minute success).

“Just what exactly is the connection
between mathematics and religion?”
The undergraduate math coordinator queried insinuatingly,
projecting in her gaze that this was all or nothing.
“Symbolic thinking?” I proposed.
“I’ll take that.”

I get a stainless steel card-holder
for a bargain of five years and thirty grand,
with more precious Arial font: University of Toronto.
(The prettiest cigarette case he’s seen all year,
will say my neighbour, in passing.)
And a day-planner for the coming year.
To list all my appointments.

The parents take me out for dinner in Chinatown.
I didn’t eat the day before, so that’s nice.

And here I am.
Hopelessly indebted.
Honorably B. S.’d.
Forever.
*******************************

Icarus

Like Icarus, I fall to fish,
but these in the grocery store
frozen-foods section,
and in breaded stick form,
and because of, not the red sun,
but the red tags that speak to me,
‘dropped lower than usual.’
There is something in them
resonant with my condition.
I will buy them though
I hate the way, when stuffed
with them and all that sauce
of spice and burnt + sweet,
the glucose trains
creep then in my skin,
put acne on my skin,
and, as I lie back,
squeeze my head awake
with an uneasy shearing stress
like that known to pennies on rails
that flatten without popping.

The other option is more precipitous:
to thin wax balls in vinegar,
and, using graduated feathers,
fix them to my arm,
that I may fly
through the screeches
above the hissing
like a pale red-eyed gull–
then, there, the certain rise on winds
and the fall to crags, hitting rocks.
It will also keep me awake with pride,
and tagged with red bruises
and red blood.

The answer then, perhaps,
is sharks, which are dangerous fish
with blades for fins and mouths
full of puncture wounds,
odd-many gills a side,
rolling black eyes , –sharks,
which are svelte cartilaginous
indefatigable leather-skinned murderers,
and that are a pleasure
to hold the arm out to
and shake a bloody hunk
of fresh-cut body at.
They frenzy, swarming,
in theirs the sea
insipid for all that salt,
for the tracest scent of it,
to get it inside them
and with it inside them,
which I comprehend.
*******************************

A New Year's Lease

She is greyer than the sleet that falls,
wearing everything black and balancing
her ribcage in an over-fat teenage frame,
unseasonably sleeveless and staggering
like a cloud through the pitch of a morning
that has otherwise seen much merry-making.

She presses half-folded white paper-towels
down to her upturned forearm, to her milky arm
sheathed in a coarse weave of criss-crossing scars,
and bleeds a bright red oval spot right through them:
it is something of a modernist
colour-blocking/etching effort
that leaves an incidental found-art
splatter-print on a sidewalk canvas.

Was it fear to face the sore dawning of the day
or the deft crafting of some
deep ones
for the New Year
that has her now unwillingly
escorted by our passing troupe of drunken fools?

Her protest is simple:
I'm ruining your New Year's Eve.
And she rolls her eyes
mis-stepping sideways to punctuate.So is our response:
No, you're not.
And we watch her intently.

We hesitate when suddenly she stops.
She refuses to enter the ER if we go with her.
So we stand; and she walks in; and she disappears behind clear glass; and we all wait; and we wait, tautening the strings of conscience that pull
our bodies and our minds together again,
resurfacing from surreal winter dark,
into a new purpose and a new day:
a transition xxx more seamless
for some than others.
*******************************

I Met a Girl

I met a girl who wrote poems.

She told me
that she wanted
to surround herself with people

who were really specks of optimistic light dust
so she could be alive in a constellation
of inspired creativity.

I said, Well maybe we could be friends:
I think of myself

as a spidery
black mildew shivering
in the turquoise moonlight of my soul.

She soured on me quickly.

Problem is I have a habit
of standing with my mouth open
breathing shadows at people to test their luminosity

and tapping heads with hammers to rattle
glimmers out of their eye-joints.
I repel social chameleons who seek out
prettier lights to bask in

and I have
made lovers
but not friends
with the children of the sun.
*******************************

Agnus

Pale-skinned, a Korean girl,
31, soft-spoken, self-contained,
whose cleverness is well-concealed,
steps lightly on ginger-silk feet
with a glassy stare,
thoughtfully,

like a Buddhist nun at prayer,
content in the sunshine
of a summer's day,
and, for all that,
a quiet mystery,
silently trim,
appealing,
cute.

She works, cooks; she is self-sufficient;
they call her Aggie on the kitchen line.

20 crept up and by without anxiety or notice,
and without a lover for her life and name.
She did not know time was a hunter.

But 30 came
with the rumble
of a construction site
and a tower of untouchability.

She
remembers the boy
who so rudely slapped her ass,
once every so often.

She tells her mother, always,
that the grandchildren are soon to come:
3 or 5 right around the corner, and,
yes, he's a really great guy,
a Canadian.

Still she is not playful with men; and
she has not known a love
to tender her shyness; and
she is ever aware the months
accumulate and stretch
and do not pass over
her hips, buttocks,
and thighs; and
they are swelling
slowly by soft slivers
like the hour's minute hand,
like the pale pearl moon silver.
*******************************

LA, or a Prophecy
Concerning the West Coast

By this we see that it was,
in the original, the fish who fell from Eden:

While bearing no resemblance to any land-creature but the scaled snake
and being of a tasty flesh
and a prey to man

and you just have to try so damn hard
to care one spit about a fish's death–really,

the fishes
now make their home in the eternal flood.

And, like time-wearing Chronos, the masculine Hebrew war god flushed
his creations out through the divine shitter and into the sea
shouting a giddy... Swim, bitches! Swim!
shooting a pistol in the air,
snapping his Bible belt,
hot for fishy white
virgin teen pussy.
*******************************

Poor Blake

Poor Blake, alone in lonely Heavens
forged of his own designing,
unconsciously his own and only
and best in company:

Hunched on a stool, he stares
in his diviners’ cup, projecting
mythic fables on the water’s
tensioned surface.

Suddenly, he straightens,
he taps his cane, impressed
and satisfied; his eyes widen
rising to ceiling casings.

‘Ah! Now! Concerning senses
of the soul, I’d say, that’s easily
the profoundest revelation
I’ve had since Monday’s tea!’
*******************************

Who sitting silent feels her depths
and clarifies with pressing patience
the stills of her emotion,
the elusive and obscure,
the riddle of rhythms,
the song of sense,
the whisper of interested quietude,
does all that I would ever do,
attempts all I would attempt,
if the menace of a duty to produce
did not stir me with anxiety
for proofs of hours spent.
*******************************

This week of sobriety,
except for those two days
of debauchery in the middle,
has been really good.
I've done some
thinking.
*******************************

Hastings

An old man wearing glasses stands on the curb
beside pigeons gathered in the wet grey gutter
around a yellow trampled half-a hotdog-bun.
He leans and with his folded umbrella
is poking, not so much at the pigeons,
as with them, in their general direction.

A one-legged beggar, as the lights change,
wheels his wheelchair through the intersection
diagonally.
The drivers are too shocked to honk their horns.
This does not prevent him from using
one poignant finger repeatedly
and calling up Hell
to keep the beasts back from his chariot.
For using only one arm, he makes very good time.

A wrinkled young man
climbs onto a newspaper box
and reaches to impale a Styrofoam cup
onto the bolts of the clamps of a street sign
to catch and save the rain for a sunny day.
*******************************

OM

Rely on No Other’s Success

Have No Fear
Have No Regret
Save Nothing of Yourself
Make Action Your State of Rest
Make Your Talent Your Passion
Suffer the Rest
Suffer the Consequence
Do
Act
Work
Rise
Accomplish
Test Yourself
Perfect Yourself

Exit Satisfied
*******************************